


Obsessions

by zoetropes



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: And a serial killer's victims hit a little close to home for Spencer, Angst, Behavioral Analysis Unit (Criminal Minds), Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Murder Mystery, Possibly Pre-Slash, Spencer Reid Centric, Spencer Reid Whump, Spoiler Spencer gets Kidnapped, There's a new intern at the BAU, Unsub | Unknown Subject, casefic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2017-03-19
Packaged: 2018-09-12 03:51:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 13,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9054118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoetropes/pseuds/zoetropes
Summary: Reid and the other agents of the BAU struggle to keep up with a mysterious unsub who confounds them at every turn. There is a determined new intern, a series of victims that hit a little too close to home for Spencer, and a case that only gets more complicated when a member of the team is abducted.





	1. Coffee

**Author's Note:**

> i'm really excited about this! this story is rated M for violence and language, but there aren't going to be any sexual situations. i don't expect the violence to really amp up until several chapters from now, and it shouldn't surpass anything shown in the show. honestly, i just really love spencer reid and i'm inspired to make a case that gets personal for him, because what better way to show my love than to just really screw him over?  
> i hope you enjoy this story!! i'm not sure how many chapters this will be but i do have an arc planned out and i anticipate i will release several chapters over this winter break. comment with any feedback or ideas or things you liked/totally hated ;)

_No one has ever loved anyone the way everyone wants to be loved. - Mignon McLaughlin_

 

Spencer Reid’s morning coffee was tall and hot and sickly sweet: just the way he liked it. He sipped it as he walked briskly to the escalator that would take him down into the Van Ness Metro Station. He warmed his pale hands on the paper cup— it was the edge of winter, the D.C. autumn winds biting and harsh, but not quite cold enough for him to bust out the basket of scarves and gloves he kept on the high shelf in his hallway closet. He pressed his hands into the warmth, trying to make contact with as much of the surface as possible to warm his long fingers and peeling red knuckles. Spencer never used the escalator railing, not after the study finding more than three million counts of bacteria on a single swab of a New York railing. Not even with escalator-involved deaths on the rise steadily since 1990. Imagine what sort of a death that would be: FBI Agent Spencer Reid undone by a Metrorail escalator. Spencer shook these thoughts out of his head. Sometimes an eidetic memory didn’t help.

He stepped down into the underground station, oxfords clacking against the cement in rhythm with the footfalls of a dozen or so other commuters on their way to the daily grind. The exact nature of Spencer’s grind had him leaving his home in Washington D.C. at 6:00 in the morning to get to Quantico at 7:30. Unfortunately, this meant that Spencer spent a great deal of his time in Virginia, often booking motels when working a taxing case rather than taking the train-bus combo all the way home and back in the morning. Technically, he was always on call, but usually he just checked in at headquarters in the morning for a new case assignment.

This was one of the usual days. Wake up, drag himself out of bed and into the shower, throw on a tie and a couple layers of cardigans, run a comb through his unruly mop of hair, and grab a coffee and bagel on the way to the train stop. It was a strict routine to get there on time, and he didn’t vary much in his habits. Spencer always did like things to be organized, at least in his day-to-day life, if not in his head. Sometimes it wasn’t as easy to get things straight in there.

He was snapped out of his reverie when someone stumbled into him from behind, the force making Spencer stagger forwards. The coffee would have flown from his hands had he not been grasping it so tightly: instead, the collision caused him to squeeze it so hard the top popped off and the steaming hot dark liquid splashed all over his beige overcoat.

“Son of a bitch!” His voice jumped an octave and he stopped in his tracks, holding his arms out to look down at the damage.

“Oh, oh no, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to—“ It was a boy. He barely looked old enough to drink, and he wore a suit altogether too big on his scrawny figure. He scrambled to help, turning out his pockets but finding nothing to soak up the mess with.

“It’s fine,” Spencer waved him off, struggling to put the top back on. “I think I have something in my bag. One sec, can you just— can you just hold this?”

“Yes, totally, I’m so sorry.” The kid took Spencer’s cup and fixed the top while Spencer rooted around in the briefcase slung across his shoulder for some napkins. “Are you…? No way.”

Spencer winced, turning up nothing. “It’ll dry, I guess.” He patted the coat despondently, then looked up as if just really seeing the kid, took his cup back. “Uh, thanks.”

“Are you Dr. Spencer Reid?” The kid blurted out. The question was immediately followed by a step backwards and a sheepish casting of his eyes downwards.

Spencer blinked, surprised. “Yes, I am.” Before he could say another word, there was a rumbling and bright lights and the rest of the station’s commuters crowded towards the stop, cutting between Reid and the boy and effectively stalling communications. “What were you…?” Spencer craned his neck to find the kid, but then the train doors opened and he was forced to swim with the crowd into the already half-full train to Virginia.

It was a long ride, but Garcia had shown him months ago how to tune into the radio on his phone, so he put his earbuds in and listened to NPR the whole way there and swiftly lost himself in his thoughts, forgetting all about the encounter he had just had. After the train ride, it was a short walk to the bus station and 15 more minutes of an NPR segment on prisoners of war before he got to Quantico. During this time he had faded back into himself, barely aware of his surroundings or his stained coat or much of anything, really. He had the tendency to retreat into himself. He hadn’t given it much thought, but, if he had stopped to analyze himself, he would probably conclude it was because of how focused he was on the job, all the time. He savored the moments he could just relax, not be straining and thinking and losing sleep staring at pictures of mutilated bodies.

This retreat from the outside world, then, must explain how he didn’t notice the same boy following him to the bus station, boarding the back of the bus, and following him all the way to Quantico.

It wasn’t until Spencer passed through security, taking out his earbuds and presenting his badge to the familiar guard and passing his briefcase through the same scanner as always, that he heard the boy’s voice. He turned, cycling through confusion, alarm, and settling on complete bewilderment.

“I’ve got it right here, I’m sorry.” Sure enough, it was the same boy from before. From back in D.C. He was wearing gloves, unlike Spencer, and struggled to pull them off and extract something from the frayed messenger bag hanging at his side.

It felt like everything was happening so fast. Gears whirred to life in Spencer’s mind. He’d followed him from D.C. It was no chance encounter, he’d followed Reid and now he was here, at the FBI headquarters, looking for something to present to security. A weapon? A bomb? There was something in that bag and it wasn’t good, and somebody was going to get hurt. “No, don’t—!” Spencer shouted, stepping forwards with his arms outstretched as the boy pulled something out from the large cavity of his bag and…

“Here.” The boy smiled meekly, dangling a temporary FBI security clearance badge. The guard glanced from a frozen Spencer to the boy and then down to the badge.

“Everything looks in order,” she said, shooting Spencer a concerned glance.

Spencer gazed at the boy, frowning. “You’re…?” He hadn’t put it together quite yet.

The boy offered a bashful smile. “The new intern. Peter Bailey.” He crossed through the security screening and collected his things from the guard before walking to Spencer and extending his hand.

“Intern,” Spencer repeated, blinking. He snapped out of his stare and shook Bailey’s hand, clearing his throat awkwardly. “Uh, sorry, I’m Dr. Spencer Reid.”

“I know,” Bailey said, practically glowing. “You’re amazing. I’ve read everything you published— I saw your lecture at Penn a couple years back, it was inspirational, really! You’re, like, half of why I even wanted to join the BAU, I can’t believe I’m here, that I got the internship, it was honestly such a long shot to begin with.” He stopped, noticing Spencer’s flustered expression.

Spencer was rubbing his thumb nervously over the cracked skin of the knuckles of his other hand. “Well, it’s, uh, great to have you aboard.” He tried to sound official (which was silly, because he was, but it didn’t feel much like it at the moment). “Did you come all the way from D.C.? On the same train as me? Why didn’t you introduce yourself?”

Now it was Bailey’s turn to blush. “I tried, er, after I bumped into you, but then we got lost in the crowd and by the time I got back on the train you had your headphones in and everything and you didn’t really look like you wanted to be disturbed. I sort of figured you saw me and you were just ignoring me, maybe, because of… well…” He gestured to Reid’s coat.

“I really didn’t see you,” Spencer said. “Come on, you can follow me upstairs. I’ll get you introduced to everyone and settled in.”

He turned and bustled in the other direction, not wanting to be any more late than necessary. He took the back stairs up, as usual, and sprinted into the office at 7:32. Not bad.

“Ow!” Came an exclamation from behind him. Spencer, momentarily forgetting about the kid trailing behind him, had let the glass door close on him after buzzing in.

“Sorry.” Spencer opened it from the inside, ushered him in.

“So this is the BAU,” Bailey breathed, staring in awe.

Spencer tried to see it from his eyes, tried to remember what it was like the first time he set foot in the FBI. It had never seemed as impressive as this kid seemed to think. Not that the FBI wasn’t special, it was just… maybe when you graduate high school at 12, when you get your first PhD at 17, when Yale is your backup school, maybe nothing feels so infinitely impossible. There had been a lot of things wrong with his childhood, but the one thing his mother always provided him was the sense that he could do whatever he wanted to. He was a _genius_ , after all, and if he didn’t have that, then what the hell did he have? So when he had first walked into the BAU headquarters, it had felt right. Not quite like he belonged with the people there, although that would change, in time, but like he belonged with the job. This was what he was meant to do, and it was never really a question of if he would do it, but when.

“This is it,” Spencer said, walking to his desk with nary a backwards glance at the stunned boy. The desk was littered with stacks of files and folders and books balanced precariously atop each other, and blue and purple and white post-it notes stuck to the edges of his computer, the borders of a picture frame, the rim of a mug. Spencer tossed his empty coffee cup in a wastebasket and slid into his swivel chair, booting up his work computer to check for new updates or messages.

“Uh, Reid?” Derek Morgan pushed himself up onto his desk, leaning across the froster glass border in-between their work stations, and raised his eyebrows.

“Ah, I know, I know,” Spencer looked down at his stained coat, taking it off and draping it across the back of the chair. “Got coffee on it, didn’t have time to wash up—“

“Not that, genius,” Morgan said patiently, the smile in his voice. “Who’s the kid?” He motioned with his head and Spencer turned in his chair to see Bailey standing awkwardly in the center of the room, clutching his bag and looking around with wide eyes.

“Oh, right, that’s, uh, Paul? Patrick?” Spencer said, feeling Morgan’s eyes on him. “Peter. Peter Bailey. Apparently he’s our new intern?”

“Huh.” Morgan looked the kid up and down. “Where’s he from?”

Spencer shrugged. “I didn’t ask.” A blinking message popped up on his desktop. “Looks like Rossi wants us in the conference room, stat.” He grabbed his clipboard and a pen and stood, briskly making his way upstairs. The kid looked lost, following Spencer with only his eyes.

“Kid, you wanna be here, you’re gonna have to keep up,” Morgan said, strolling past him up the metal stairs to the conference room. Bailey stared after him.

“Am I allowed to…?” The door closed behind Morgan, and Bailey was left standing there, unsure and unprepared. He watched the door of the conference room, weighing his options. He could go up, but they didn’t call him, maybe he wasn’t supposed to be there, maybe he should just stay down here and…

The door opened and Morgan’s head popped out. “You coming or what?”

Bailey scurried up the stairs as fast as he could.


	2. Nightmares

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope everyone had a merry christmas!! it's the third night of hanukkah tonight, and it's been great. i'm so grateful for my family and friends for making this holiday season warm in this hell of a year <3 and i'm grateful for everyone reading this, i'm really inspired to tell this story. sorry, this chapter is a bit dark, hahah, but i hope you like it!   
> spoilers for 2.15 (Revelations), 3.2 (In Name and Blood), and 3.16 (Elephant's Memory). and tw for blood and death!

_I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now? - John Lennon_

 

It was a bad day. It started with the coffee cart being out of sugar.

“What do you mean? That’s not— that’s not even possible, that’s one of the most basic parts of making coffee, how can you just be _out?_ ” A large part of curing Spencer’s morning irritability was drinking his daily cup.

The coffee guy shrugged, as if it was no big deal. “Business convention’s in town. Those guys love their sugar.”

“And you don’t have enough to restock? What kind of coffee cart are you?” Spencer snapped.

“Starbucks is a block away, man,” the guy gestured, his voice developing a nasty quality to it that Spencer didn’t really favor.

“Fine, I’m sorry. Just…” he pulled out a couple of neatly folded dollar bills. “Give it to me black.” He checked his watch. He was running out of time. This was _not_ part of his routine.

“Done.” Suddenly the guy was all toothy grin, as he brewed up a cup and slid it easily across to Spencer. “Enjoy.”

Spencer snatched it and broke out into a fast walk. He took a sip of the coffee: tall and hot and dark and absolutely disgusting. He pulled away immediately, screwing his face up in distaste. The red hand was blinking as he got to the crosswalk. The opening to the underground train station was just on the other side, and the train was in three— no, two minutes, now— and damned if Spencer was going to _miss his train_. He’d have to wait another half hour, and by that time he’d be late for work.

So Spencer pushed away all of the statistics swirling around his head about jaywalking (60% of pedestrian deaths happened while not on a crosswalk) and sprinted across the street (1,451 pedestrians killed while not utilizing crosswalks correctly in 2006) just as the hand stopped blinking, shining red in its force. A car slammed on its horn, but Spencer barely heard it, the hint of a headache he had woken up with threatening to burst into a full-on migraine. He took the escalator stairs two at a time, arrived at the station as the train pulled up, halting with a screech that Spencer could feel stabbing into his temples.

A lone blessing was that Bailey wasn’t in sight. He must have gotten into a different car. The intern’s enthusiasm was nice, Spencer argued with himself. It’s just that his enthusiasm, more often than not, was centered on Spencer: asking him questions, reciting memorized passages from Reid’s published works, trying to talk to him about his personal life. Normally, Spencer wouldn’t mind so much, but he could see the looks the others exchanged behind his back, as much as he liked to pretend he couldn’t. Last week, Emily had said something like, “Looks like you’re not the kid anymore, Reid”, and it made him wonder. Is that what he was like when he was younger? Is that how they saw him? It brought up something in him that he didn’t much like to think about.

Spencer switched on his phone, put in his earbuds, tuned into the radio, and tried to relax. Tried to enjoy his coffee. Tried to just stop thinking so hard.

“This is Toni Jordan, and this is TELL ME MORE with NPR News. I’m here with Meredith Morris, who’s here to tell us about her experience as a survivor of abduction and torture at the hands of the U.S. government…”

And, just like that, Spencer couldn’t breathe. The sound faded away into a murky cloud, and all he could hear was his own heartbeat, loud and fast. And then a voice. A voice he never, ever wanted to remember. _Confess your sins._ He was swirling, his eyes screwed shut. _I’m not a sinner._ He couldn’t do this, not here, not now. Not today. _We’re all sinners._ Spencer gasped in a breath, his chest tight, and then he could feel hands on him, grabbing him, tearing at him. He didn’t know what to do, how to fix this; he was back in the cabin, back in the cemetery, and there was a gun to his head and he was utterly alone, nobody to help him. _Help me, help me, somebody help me, can’t you see he’s killing me?_ He didn’t know who he was pleading to. His foot radiated with pain. The gun pressed, cold, against his forehead. He wasn’t ready to die, he didn't want to die— _We can’t be saved,_ Tobias said, his face inexplicably sad, and his finger curled around the trigger.

“Hey, are you okay?” A hand touched Spencer's arm and his eyes shot open. He inhaled sharply, and the train car shuddered back into focus. The words of NPR in his ears faded back in, but Spencer ripped the earbuds out immediately, throwing his phone to his lap. The lady next to him retracted her hand nervously, her eyes wide and concerned. No, not concerned. Afraid. Spencer glanced around and realized with a sickening twist in his stomach that he had garnered more than a few stares, with varying levels of hostility. Stupidly, his first thought was, _why didn’t they help me?_

It wasn’t real. He knew that. He’d been through this before. The flashes, the nightmares, waking up in a cold sweat tangled in his sheets and screaming out for something (for someone), looking at a bullet hole in a victim’s forehead and _feeling it_ on his own. Every time he thought he was past this, that he was back to normal, it would bubble to surface again.

Spencer forced a smile at the woman. “I’m fine, thanks.” A blatant lie, but she seemed to relax a little as he took the burden of helping him off her shoulders. He wouldn’t put that on anybody else; nobody deserved to have to help him with this. If he wouldn’t talk to his own friends, there was no way he’d tell a stranger he was anything less than fine.

He was still shaken when he got to the office, but he’d stopped at a café just outside the bus stop and gotten another cup of coffee, this time with lots of sugar, the way he liked it. It made him feel better, if only a little.

“Morning, Spence. Looks like the date went well,” JJ said with a wink as he came in.

“What?” Spencer said. “What— I didn’t go on a date. I never date. I mean, not never never, I just meant—“ His cheeks were burning, but it was a welcome distraction.

She raised her eyebrows. “Well, somebody sure likes you. Package came for you.” She pointed, and he followed her gaze to his desk, atop which sat a small pot of bright purple and pink flowers.

“Cosmos,” he crossed to his desk and frowned with them. “They’re actually my birth month flower.” He picked up the pot, looked at it. “I think they’re meant for someone else.”

“What, you were that bad?” Morgan smirked, craning his neck to get a look at the flowers.

“No,” Spencer said, annoyed. “There was no— nothing happened. I don’t know who these are from. How did they even get here? You know, they’re probably for you.” He thrust the pot at Morgan.

Morgan didn’t accept it, holding his hands up. “Man, all my flowers are left on my bed, not my desk.”

Spencer sighed, rubbing his forehead. “Well, there’s no note. It was probably some kind of mistake.” He dropped the pot in his desk trashcan.

Morgan frowned at him. “You alright, pretty boy? You look tired.”

Spencer plastered a smile on his face. “I’m good. Just had a long night,” he lied. And then, seeing the look on Morgan’s face, “Not that kind of long night!”

And then Bailey was there. “Uh, JJ told me to tell you guys we’ve got a new case in Arkansas, and that we’ll brief on the plane.”

“Great,” Spencer muttered under his breath. He grabbed his bag, stuffed a couple journals off his desk into it, and tried to forget about what had happened earlier. “Hey, Morgan, did you know that, every year, Arkansas hosted the world’s championship duck-calling contest?”

“Actually, I did,” Morgan said, his face unreadable.

“Really?” Spencer said, a little too excited.

Morgan laughed, clapped Spencer on the back hard enough to make him jump. “No, genius. Nobody knows that. C’mon, let’s go.”

 

* * *

 

The case was brutal. Someone was abducting and murdering children in foster homes. Hotch had a nasty mood all day, like he always did when the case involved children. And this was worst than most. There was something about seeing pictures of kids with their throats slit that soured everyone.

“We’ll catch this bastard,” Prentiss said to Hotch when they didn’t think Spencer could hear them.

“I know,” Hotch said, closed off as ever, but then something slipped. “I miss Jack. Since Haley moved out, I just… I call him, when I can, but I want to see his face.”

They worked long hours, all day, barely stopping to eat. They interviewed the parents, the social workers, the friends; it was harrowing work. It was 8:00pm when they cracked it. The kids all had the same social worker, but they were assigned new ones when he was laid off a couple months ago. The stressor. Garcia dug into his background and, sure enough, he was adopted. Abused by the foster parents. He thought he was an angel of mercy to the kids, killing them to spare them a life of misery.

“Get this creep,” Garcia said, sounding rattled over the speakerphone.

“We will, baby,” Morgan said, his face set hard. “We will.”

“Let’s go,” Rossi said.

They busted into his house. Spencer shivered at how… _normal_ it looked. Clean, but not too clean. Trimmed hedges, grass lawn, nice red curtains on the shutters. It could be anybody’s home. The neighbors all described him as nice: a bit isolated, but polite. None of them believed he murdered children in his free time.

“Clear,” Prentiss called from the kitchen.

Morgan busted into the living room, gun drawn. “Clear,” he shouted.

Reid and Hotch took the upstairs, treading carefully up the staircase that creaked under their footsteps. They reached the landing, and Hotch gestured silently towards the door at the end of the hallway. Spencer nodded, and padded carefully in that direction, Hotch taking the door to the left.

The door was slightly ajar. Spencer burst through, leveling his gun, and found it pointing at a man. He was slumped against the wall, on the ground, a small revolver held against his own temple with a shaky hand. His eyes met Spencer’s.

Spencer lowered his gun slowly, put his hands up. “Don’t do this. I’m not going to hurt you, look. Look.”

The man looked, tears dripping down his face. His hand shook, but his voice was steady. “I’m done. I can’t do this anymore.”

Spencer know well enough he wasn’t talking about the children. “Don’t,” he said, nearly a whisper. A plea. “You don’t have to do this.” He took a step towards him.

“I do,” the man said. “I do. I’m the last one, I promise. I promise,” he repeated, his eyes glazing over, staring into some place far away.

“No,” Spencer breathed, moving towards him as fast as he could, hand reaching for the gun.

He was too late. The man’s finger jerked on the trigger and his body convulsed, jerking as the bullet ripped through his skull, spraying blood out the other side, and then he dropped, lifeless, to the floor.

Spencer flinched back, gasping, and his ears rang loud as Hotch ran into the room. He felt hands on his shoulders turn him around, could see Hotch’s lips moving but could barely hear the words.

“…okay? Reid, are you okay?” Hotch was saying, still grabbing him.

“I’m okay,” Spencer said, lying for the third time today. “I’m okay. I— he—“

“You’ve got blood on you,” Hotch insisted, staring at Spencer’s face.

“Oh,” Spencer said dumbly, bringing his sleeve up and dragging it across his cheek. It came away with blood smeared across it. “It’s his.”

Hotch swallowed, nodded. He shot a glance at the dead man on the floor. “Good.”

It wasn’t good. Spencer felt dead. Spencer felt like he wanted to die. The shot still rang in his ears, and he squeezed his eyes shut, hoping that would stop him from replaying it in his head, but that was a mistake. When his eyes were closed, he still saw the gun, but now it was against his forehead, cold and hard, and he heard the click as Tobias pulled the trigger.

“…out of here,” Hotch said. “Come on, Reid. It’s okay.”

It’s never okay, Spencer thought bitterly. It’s never, ever okay. Not here. Not for me. But you don’t want to know that.

He made his way downstairs, outside, past the others. He wasn’t even sure if Hotch was still with him, and he didn’t care. His mind was on fire, it was burning itself down, and it took all of his concentration to ignore it.

“What happened in there?” It was Bailey.

Spencer stared down at him. “He killed himself.”

Bailey met his gaze, eyes shining. “How did it happen? Did he talk to you? What did he say?”

“You’re _excited_ ,” Spencer found himself saying.

“It’s exciting,” Bailey looked confused. “I wish I could be in there.”

“That’s why you’re not,” Spencer spat, and brushed past the intern. He didn’t talk to anyone else during the car ride back to the jet, or the jet ride back to headquarters. Everyone else was chatting, allowing the smiles to return to their faces. For them, it was over. They didn’t have his blood under their fingernails from where they had tried to scrub it off their faces.

Spencer was getting ready to walk to the train station. He wouldn’t be home until past midnight, but it was better than staying here for the night. He just wanted to sleep. But Hotch came up to him, indecipherable as always.

“You sure you’re alright, Reid? You’ve been quiet.” Hotch furrowed his brow, gazed down at him. When Spencer didn’t answer, he continued. “I know what it’s like. To be haunted by the stuff that happens out there. We’re all afraid. We’re all changed by it. But we don’t go through it alone, you understand?” Spencer didn’t look at him. “Do you understand?” Hotch repeated, more urgently this time.

“I understand,” Spencer said, and he did.

“Good,” Hotch said. “Well. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Spencer nodded, and left without another word. He understood well enough. Hotch said they were all “changed” by what happens out there. Spencer didn’t feel changed. He didn’t feel like a different person. He felt _broken_. He didn’t want to wake up crying, or have another panic attack in the shower and wind up shaking on the floor, water pounding down on his back; he didn’t want to freak out on cases; he didn’t want the odds of his own death running through his head every time he made a decision; he didn’t want that nagging urge in the back of his mind, the one that never went away, no matter how much he pretended it had, that told him he needed the dilaudid, and wouldn’t it be so easy; he didn’t want to feel so _alone_ all the time, and he knew they were all trying, trying to reach him, but he just felt so tired. Tired of all of it. Tired of living in his own head. He wondered if this is how his mom felt. He wondered if it would be better to be like her, to not even know that there was something wrong with him. He immediately hated himself more for thinking that. There wasn’t anything wrong with her. She was sick, was all.

He wished he could call after Hotch, or Morgan, or any of them, and just say that out loud. I feel sick. I feel bad, a lot of the time. I want— I need your help. But then he could hear Tobias (no, Charles) in his head. _You’re weak._ And he found himself unable to speak, to talk to his friends, like always.

That night’s sleep was restless. He found himself back in high school, tied to a pole, and they all stared at him and laughed. But it wasn’t the high school football team, it wasn’t Harper Hillman and Alexa Lisbon, it was JJ and Emily and Rossi and Hotch and Morgan, too, Morgan laughed the hardest. And it was his father.

“Don’t leave me,” Spencer pleaded, as they walked away. “Don’t leave me here. Please. Please, god.”

And then it was Tobias, staring sadly up at him, blood trickling from the bullet Reid had shot through his forehead. “This is God’s will.”

Spencer woke up calling for someone, something, but he forgot what it was so quickly he was never sure he called in the first place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> love you all! thank you so much for reading. i love getting feedback/ideas in the comments, so if you have anything, feel free to talk to me :)


	3. Victims

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yay, we're finally getting to the case! tw for gore, violence, reference of sexual assault

_I was ready to love the whole world— none understood me: and I learned to hate. - Mikhail Lermontov_

 

The next month was long and tiring, but some things were starting to feel okay. Spencer went to a meeting, one for recovering addicts. He didn’t like to think of himself that way, like he belonged there, with them, but he liked the meeting despite himself. He didn’t talk, but he listened. And he looked at the others, and they looked back at him, and he felt like they actually saw him, instead of seeing the Spencer Reid he wore to work, or out with friends. The people there saw the broken him, and they smiled, and they nodded, because they were broken too. A week in a row, he couldn’t remember any of his dreams. That was nice. It was nice to stop thinking, for once, to fade away.

And things were okay at work, too. They played around, joked and talked and went out for drinks afterwards a few times. Garcia brought her new boyfriend, and Morgan brought his irresistible charm, which always ended in him leaving with one woman or another, and Emily brought jokes and JJ brought charming conversation and Rossi brought the drink money (always another round on him, always waving cash around) and Bailey always brought lemonade, he wasn’t of age yet, and Hotch was the designated driver. And Reid was… there. In the background. But that was okay. He told them he was okay, and, more and more, he wasn’t lying about it.

And then the new case happened.

“Three dead teenagers, all different schools, all from different neighborhoods around the Washington D.C. area,” Hotchner briefed them. “Local police called for our help because…” he took some pictures out of a file and slid them across the large round wooden table to show the others.

“Oh, God,” JJ said, leaning back and averting her eyes from the sight, covering her mouth with one hand.

“Man,” Morgan said, staring hard at the pictures.

It was one girl and two boys. They were each strung up with rope to the flagpole in the front of their school, blindfolded and dressed only in their underwear. Their throats had been slit, the candy red blood pouring from the wound in a sheet down their bodies. Reid felt his own stomach twist at the sight. It reminded him of something he didn’t want to think about. 

“The first one was two weeks ago, Courtney Fallon. Seventeen years old, good grades, popular in her school. Second was last weekend, Alex Martin. Eighteen, a senior, alright academically but he was the captain of the football team. Last was found three days ago, Oscar Robinson. Quarterback in his high school’s football team. Seventeen, a junior, average student overall.” Hotch pointed to each one in turn.

“So the unsub’s killing teenagers,” Prentiss said. “What’s the correlation? Why these kids? Why these neighborhoods?”

“They were all popular,” Reid murmured, flicking through the crime scene photos. 

“Two on the sports team, the other pretty and popular,” Morgan agreed, scanning the files. “What’s anyone got against these kids? They look like model citizens.”

“It’s very public, the unsub wanted to be seen,” Emily frowned. “He was making a statement. So what is the statement?”

“See me,” Spencer said, staring down at the dead bodies. “These were all popular kids, right? Surely, they were the focus of attention in their schools, their lives. Maybe our unsub just wanted to be noticed.”

“Well, he’s got what he wanted,” JJ said.

“But, who does he want to notice him?” Rossi said. “They were all from different schools. What’s the connection? Whose attention is he grabbing by murdering these people?”

“I don’t know,” Spencer shook his head.

“What about the way they were killed?” Hotch gestured to the pictures. “Throats slashed, strung up outside their schools.”

“And blindfolded,” Morgan said. “Indicator of guilt. There was no chance of the unsub sparing their lives, so it didn’t matter if they saw him or not. So he must have done it because he was ashamed; he felt guilty about killing them.”

“If they were found at their schools, where were they abducted?” Spencer said.

“All signs point to them being abducted on their way home from school,” Hotch said. “Then brought back to the school and killed right out there, on school premises, before being strung up.”

“Then the unsub knew their daily routines,” Spencer said. “Which way they would go, where he could take them without being seen, when there would be people present at the school.”

“He must have stalked them for weeks,” Bailey said, peering over the table. They had all sort of forgotten he was there.

“But the kills were only a week apart,” Emily pointed out. “He had a new victim every weekend.”

“What if,” Morgan mused. “What if he already had his victims picked out? What if he’d been planning this for months, even, and he only started killing once he was sure? Look at this, the crime scene is impeccable, the ropes tight… there’s no progress. His first victim was so neat…”

“Either it wasn’t his first victim, or he’d planned this for quite a while,” Rossi finished. “But then why only kill once a week, once he’s made the decision to start? If he’s got some sort of personal vendetta against these kids, why not just take them out all at once?”

“Their bodies were all found Friday nights,” Hotch said. “What if he’s only free on the weekends? He doesn’t have the time to kill them on a weekday because of his job. Maybe it’s taxing, long hours.”

“Are we sure this is a personal vendetta?” Bailey asked. “We know he’s killing to be noticed, but, again, why these guys? They didn’t even know each other.”

“Maybe he had a type, and he just killed the available person,” Spencer struggled to explain his thought. “Like, you’re the unsub. You know you want to kill a popular kid, so you look at the football team. You know you want to kill them on a Friday night, because of the hours of your job, but Connor goes to parties every weekend and Shaun goes straight home from school because his mom is waiting for him and Riley only walks through populated areas— so you find the one that you can pick off. The one that falls away from the herd, that’s easiest for you to get to. Maybe the unsub planned these more carefully than we thought.”

Rossi leaned back, massaged his forehead. “That means he’s killing another next Friday night, but we don’t know who or where, just that it’ll be a popular high schooler.”

“I can’t go on live TV and tell that to families in D.C.,” JJ protested. “We need something more concrete, we need to be on top of this, or it’ll be hysteria. Parents pulling their kids out of school, schools could even close down. We need to narrow down the area.”

“They were each in a different school district, right?” Reid jumped up and started towards the map of D.C. up on the cork board. He grabbed a red Sharpie and stared at it. “Alright, the bodies were found here, here, and here.” He marked them each with an X. “And these were the victim’s homes. So here’s the route they would have taken home.” He drew lines, long and bold and red. “He hasn’t returned to a school yet, and we have no reason to think he will. This unsub is out to make a point, and he’s made it there. So he won’t kill again in these areas.” He circled large portions of the map and crossed them out in bold strokes. “Now, victimology— all the victims were white, upper-middle class. Three’s a pattern, he’s got a cemented type down. So, if we’re talking demographics, that would take out these sections.” He crossed out a large section. “And we know that this type of unsub kills within his own demographic, since it has a sexual component. Most sexual crimes are committed within their own race.”

“We don’t know this is sexually motivated,” Bailey interjected.

“No, the victims weren’t raped, but they were stripped. That implies some kind of mindset of sexual violence in the unsub,” Spencer pointed out. 

“But the victims were different genders,” Emily said. “That means either our unsub is bisexual, or the stripping had a different motivation.”

“Humiliation,” Spencer said quietly, trying not to think about being tied, naked, to the goalpost as they laughed, as they all laughed. “He wanted to humiliate them before they died, but he left the underwear on. He wasn’t prepared to fully go through with it. Still, given the statistics, we can reasonably assume he’s white, too. And unsubs like this don’t kill within their own neighborhood, so he’s in one of these areas.” He pointed to the swath of areas left unmarked. It was about a quarter of what they started with.

“Hey, isn’t that your neighborhood?” Emily said, gesturing to one near Spencer’s left hand.

“Yes,” he said darkly, staring at the board.

“Good work, Reid,” Hotchner said. “We’ll canvass the area, talk to the families and friends of the victims, try to find possible connections. Let’s drive to D.C.; JJ, you’re with me. Morgan and Reid, Prentiss and Rossi. Let’s go.”

Reid grabbed his stuff and met Morgan down by their desks. “Hey. Good work up there,” Morgan said, pulling on his leather jacket and looking at him oddly. “Are you… okay?”

Spencer swallowed. “I’m fine.” But, curiously, for once, he decided to try sharing a little. “I’m just thinking of that thing I told you about, with the football team. In high school.” He looked at his shoes. “It just feels sort of personal, even though I know it’s not.”

“I get that, man,” Morgan nodded. “It’s hard, seeing those kids up there. We’ve been through some sick things,” he said, and he wasn’t only talking about the case. “But that’s why we’re here, right? That’s why we’re doing this. To save them. So what happened to us…” 

“Doesn’t happen again.” Spencer took a deep breath. “Yeah. It’s hard to remember that, sometimes. Who we’re doing this for.” Them. The teenagers strung up there. But also, the unsub. Isolated and unnoticed and in so much pain he felt like he needed to murder just to feel real. And it won’t work. It never works. The unsubs, they’re ill. And this won’t make it feel better, Spencer had been around long enough to know that. The only way to help them was to stop them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope you all are enjoying this!! i'm having fun writing this. drop me some kudos or a comment if you enjoyed it :D <3


	4. Whispers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry it's been a few days since my last update! i've been trying to update a 2,000 word or so chapter every/every other day, but i missed my deadline because of holiday celebrations. my schedule will be resuming now, though. i added some reid/morgan fun in here with the case drama, because i'm a sucker for them. still unsure if i'm going full slash with them here or just hinting at it. either way, i hope you enjoy! <3

_All things are subject to interpretation; whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth - Friedrich Nietzsche_

 

Morgan bobbed his head to the beat of the Springsteen song that blared through the radio of the large black FBI van. Reid sat in the passenger seat, staring out the window and thinking. 

“You know,” Spencer said, breaking the silence. “The crew of the space shuttle Discovery played _Rendezvous_ by Bruce Springsteen in 1999 when they rendezvoused with the Hubble Space Telescope.”

Morgan glanced over at Reid, raising his eyebrows. “You astound me, kid. You can make even The Boss sound boring and geeky.”

Spencer blushed. “The Discovery really isn’t boring. You know it’s launched and landed _39_ times? That’s more than any other spacecraft. That’s more than Columbia and Challenger put together!”

“Man, I stopped caring about space stuff around the time Star Wars stopped being a thing,” Morgan said.

“Star Wars never stopped being a thing!” Spencer exclaimed, aghast, and, as if to demonstrate, rolled up his pant leg to reveal a pair of patterned R2-D2 socks.

“Oh, now I _know_ it’s not cool anymore,” Morgan laughed.

“Take a right here,” Spencer pointed to the upcoming intersection.

“I know how to get to the D.C. police station,” Morgan said. “It’s just up ahead.”

“Yeah, up and to the right.” Spencer pointed again. “Take a— take a right, you’re gonna miss it.” He jabbed his finger at the window.

“Stop pointing, I know where I’m going, it’s not yet,” Morgan snapped.

“I live here! It’s right— oh, look, there it goes,” Spencer said, watching it go by as they passed the road they were supposed to turn onto.

“Goddammit,” Morgan swore. “It was back there. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“ _I literally just told you_ ,” Spencer’s voice jumped up shrilly, but then he saw Morgan suppressing a laugh. “What? _What?_ ”

“I’m just messing with you, kid,” Morgan said. “Man, it’s fun to watch you get so worked up.”

Spencer crossed his arms and glowered at Morgan as they made a U-turn. “It’s not funny.”

“A little. Maybe just a little, c’mon,” Morgan grinned at him, and Spencer couldn’t help but smile back. There was something about Morgan, an energy, that was irresistible.

When they got to the station, the others were already halfway through their briefing of the local police.

“…Highly likely to be psychopathic, given the level of extreme control over the crime scene,” Hotch was saying. “Neat, organized, obsessive tendencies. He is socially isolated, craving attention and company, but he doesn’t get it, most likely because of poor social skills. He might be quiet and removed, or the opposite, overly enthusiastic to the point of awkwardness, but either way he is off-putting, not someone you’d want to befriend. He’s young, early to mid-twenties, a white male, and he doesn’t get attention in his job or possible school surroundings, despite his high intelligence. He feels under appreciated and unnoticed. And he was most likely bullied in school,” He finished. “We’re looking in these areas, and these school districts,” he gestured to Reid’s map, which they had brought. “Are likely to turn up the next victim. We have until next Friday to find this guy.”

The police divided up into groups to canvass the areas, take precautions with the schools. JJ gave a press conference, mentioning some details of the profile. This wasn’t the type to spook easily; he wanted this, to be noticed. Some of the team stayed back to concentrate on the profile, and Bailey was back with Garcia in Quantico trying to dig through the kids’ social media profiles, but Prentiss and Reid were sent out to interview the victims’ friends at their schools. 

“She was my best friend,” a girl said of Courtney Fallon, mascara running down her fair cheeks. “She was just so _nice,_ and _funny,_ and… why is this happening?”

“Did you know of anybody who might have wanted to hurt her?” Emily asked gently.

The girl shook her head fervently. “Everybody loved her.”

“Everybody loved him,” a boy said, Alex Martin’s best friend, when they interviewed the next batch of high schoolers. “He was the king of this place. He was so strong, and loyal to his friends. He kept things going around here.”

“What does that mean?” Spencer frowned.

“I don’t know,” the boy mirrored Spencer’s expression. “He was just… everybody knew Alex. Nobody would want to hurt him.”

“Nobody would want to hurt him,” Oscar Robinson’s girlfriend said, over at the next high school. “He’s so handsome… was…” Emily offered her a tissue box and she blew her nose loudly.

“So you’d say he was popular,” Emily said.

“Yes! Of course,” she said. “Why wouldn’t he be? He was so tough, everybody thought he was cool, all the girls liked him, he was handsome and strong and… I mean, the teachers liked him too! And his coach adored him. It was all so perfect. Prom was going to be _perfect_.”

Reid and Prentiss walked out of the last high school, exhausted and with a whopping zero leads.

“So, according to all their teachers and friends, these kids were saints,” Emily said. “Which we already saw on their transcripts, but I figured we’d get at least a little something else here.”

“Maybe we’re talking to the wrong people,” Spencer frowned. “We want to find their enemies, we don’t talk to their grieving friends. Hey— you!” He stopped a kid who was walking by, head down, hands shoved in his pockets.

The boy looked up, dark hair flopping across his eyes. “What?”

“Dr. Spencer Reid, Behavioral Analysis Unit with the FBI,” Spencer said, peering at the kid. “Did you know Oscar Robinson?”

The boy shrugged, his posture defensive and eyes distrustful. “Guess so. Everybody knew him.”

“Were you in classes with him?” Spencer insisted, despite the boy’s glare. “Or on the team?” Emily glanced at Spencer. They knew full well the kid wasn’t on the football team, they’d already interviewed all of Robinson’s teammates.

“The football team?” The boy wrinkled his nose. “God, no.” He looked down again. “Oscar and I weren’t friends.” 

There was something about the way he said it, his inflection, that made pushed Spencer to dig deeper. “Why not?”

“We just didn’t get along, okay?” The boy snapped, glaring up at Spencer. “He was a bully. Picked on me and my friends. I’m not happy he’s dead, but I don’t think a lot of us are gonna be losing sleep over it.” With that, he brushed Spencer off and walked away quickly towards the school.

Spencer exchanged a look with Emily. “Of course his girlfriend didn’t think he was a bully. She was popular too.”

“That’s not fair,” Emily said. “Real life isn’t like the movies, there aren’t all these clearly defined social hierarchies. I know there weren’t when I was in high school.”

“Maybe you just didn’t notice them,” Spencer said. “Because you weren’t at the bottom.”

***

The call came in the next day, when Reid was sent back to Quantico to help Garcia look through some student files. At the time, Reid thought it was a coincidence that he was alone in the room when the office phone rang; he thought it was a coincidence that he was the only one there to pick it up. 

“Behavioral Analysis Unit at Quantico, this is Dr. Spencer Reid speaking,” Spencer said.

“You got it wrong,” a voice said, gravely and distorted.

“Excuse me?” He frowned. “Who is this?”

“I’m not what you think I am.” The voice was quiet, almost whispering.

A chill ran down Spencer’s spine. He saw Garcia in the room across the hall, typing furiously away at something. He tried to wave, catch her eye, but she was too absorbed in her work to notice. He turned his attention back to the phone. “Who are you, then?” Stalling. He grabbed a sheet of notebook paper, wrote down everything they’d said so far.

The laugh was short, bitter. “You’re the genius. You figure it out.”

“You-- you know who I am?” Spencer’s pen scratched to a halt.

“Of course I do. I know you better than you think. I know you better than you know me.”

Spencer’s heart thudded in his ears. “Wh-- talk to me. Just tell me what’s going on, tell me why you’re doing this.”

“You were wrong,” the voice repeated. “You’ll see.”

“Wait, wait wait wait--” But it was too late, he couldn’t hold him on the line. The unsub disconnected and Spencer was left there, staring at the phone, dazed and scattered. His pen was still perched on the paper, bleeding out blue ink onto the notepad. 

“Garcia,” he said, standing, black encroaching on his vision. He didn’t know what this meant, but any sense of safety he’d built up over the past months seemed to crumble away from him. “Garcia!” He was yelling now, and the blonde looked up from across the hall, confused.

She was in the room and at his side in an instant. “Spencer? What’s going on, are you okay?”

“He called.” Spencer’s head was spinning. _He knows me._ “The unsub called me, just now.”

“What? What did he say?” Garcia frowned.

“He said we were wrong about him,” Reid said. “He called _me_ , Garcia. This isn’t right, something’s off.”

“I’ll call the others,” she promised. “I’ll get them back here now.”

“Can you get the audio of the call from the cell tower? There’s something about it, something about his tone-- his voice,” Spencer was talking too quickly, stumbling over his words and jumbling his thoughts. “He was quiet, and he definitely used a voice distorter. Not uncommon, when an unsub might call in an anonymous tip, but this is different.” Spencer played the words over in his head, so concentrated he didn’t even notice Garcia leave the room to call in the team. _I know you better than you think,_ the unsub had said. _I know you better than you know me._

The voice distorter. The whisper. Calling him “genius”. _He doesn’t just know_ of _me,_ Spencer thought. _We know each other._


	5. Mímir

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is anybody else just really frickin happy about 2017??? happy new year's, guys!! <3  
> on a different note, i'm starting another fic, a kidfic au where all the team members live in the same town and are roughly the same age and they all meet one summer and shenanigans happen (inspired by stand by me or the goonies). and i'm looking for beta readers!! let me know if you're interested.  
> and, as always, thank you for reading!

He who trusts the world, the world betrays him. - Hazrat Ali Ibn Abu-Talib A.S

 

Spencer got up early. He wouldn’t call it waking, since he had never fallen asleep, only stared at the constellations made by bumps on his apartment ceiling. He imagined they told a story, some ancient myth of creation or love or war. He found a little scattering of bumps near the corner and fancied it looked like a man. He called that one Mímir. The Norse god of knowledge and wisdom. Spencer had always wished he could be wise like that. Intelligence and wisdom did not come so neatly hand in hand as people often thought. Of course, Mímir was beheaded in the  Æsir-Vanir War, but his severed head gave guidance to Odin. Spencer would rather not be beheaded, but he figured nobody’s life was perfect.

After he showered in the morning, he wiped away the steam clouding the mirror and stared at himself. An alien creature stared back at him, eyes rimmed with gray circles, lips chapped and cracking, wet hair clinging in strands to his cheeks. He gazed at himself with tired eyes and wished he’d never looked.

When he opened the door to his apartment, there was a small potted zinnia on his mat. Third one this week. He didn’t know who was messing with him, he suspected it was Morgan, but it was getting old, and he didn’t have the patience for it today. He picked it up and tossed it directly into his kitchen trash, like the others.  _ Zinnia,  _ he thought bitterly.  _ To absent friends. Tell me about it. _

“Long night?” Hotch commented as Reid walked into the D.C. field office. Reid nodded wordlessly.

“I couldn’t trace the call through cell tower records,” Garcia said. They had all come out to D.C. and were gathered in the conference room, their faces displaying different levels of weariness and frustration. From the way they avoided him, Reid guessed his looked worse than all of theirs. “He was using a burner. But I was able to get a copy of the conversation, and I ran it through some EQ and isolated a background noise. It sounded like typing, and there was really faint conversation in the background. I’m working on getting that higher quality so I can hear what was being said. It might clue us into where he was; it seems like maybe he was at his work when he called.”

“Why call now? Especially while he was at work, when it would be so risky?” Emily frowned.

“His urge to get his message across must have been irresistible,” Hotch said.

“That falls in line with the profile,” Morgan nodded. “He kills to make a statement, but he thinks we’ve misinterpreted the statement, so he needs to let the world know.”

“Not the world,” Spencer said. “Us. He didn’t call the press, he called us."

“Because of the press conference?” Emily frowned. “Maybe we got a part of the profile wrong and he’s upset. We know he wants to be remembered, but maybe not the way we’re presenting him.”

“It’s not about the media,” Spencer said. “Look at the transcript, he didn’t say he wanted to be remembered. He wants to be  _ known _ . I think this is personal.”

“We already ruled out a personal vendetta, the victims don’t have anything in common. This is more of a revenge fantasy,” Rossi argued.

“We were wrong!” Spencer slammed his hand down on the table. “Look at what he said; we were wrong about the profile. We were wrong about everything! This guy doesn’t care about the victims. He-- he stripped them and strung them up for everybody to see; that says exactly what he thinks about them. The only thing we’ve seen him caring about so far is  _ us. _ ”

“If it were personal to the team, he’d have made contact before this,” Hotch shook her head. “It doesn’t add up. The victims aren’t personal to any of us. Reid, the unsub calling us doesn’t change the profile we already--”

JJ strode in, her face pale. They all knew something was wrong. “Guys, you’d better come out here.”

They were on their feet in an instant. The precinct was in a panic, officers rushing back and forth, flipping through files frantically. JJ led them through to the front of the building and out the double doors to the sidewalk in front of the police station.

“What’s going-- oh.” Reid stopped abruptly, staring up at the sight above them.

A man was tied to the telephone pole directly outside the station, throat slashed. The blood dripped down and collected in a pool on the ground below pole. Officers surrounded it, buzzing in a frenzy. The man was well into his fifties.

“Oh my god,” Garcia breathed, unable to tear her eyes away.

“What the hell?” Hotch’s eyes blazed with a quiet fury. “Who saw him? Somebody has to have seen him.” He grabbed the chief of police by the shoulder and spun him around, pointed furiously to the dripping body. “I need to interview the witnesses.”

“There are no witnesses,” the chief said, almost inaudibly.

“What?” Hotch spat.

“It was their coffee break,” he said. “Nobody was at the windows-- I already have officers out canvassing the area to see if there are any pedestrians around who might have seen anything--”

“How can somebody bind and murder a man outside the  _ police station  _ and get away with it?” Hotch was nearly yelling.

“He wasn’t killed here,” Emily said, turning her attention away from the officer who had examined the body. “Look at the blood, it didn’t fall straight down.” She was right. It was messier this time, smeared across his neck and shoulders instead of falling in sheets vertically. “He was killed somewhere else and transported here.”

A figure came bouncing down the sidewalk to them in the opposite direction. “Hey guys, I got some coffee! I thought maybe--” Bailey stopped dead in his tracks, eyes fixed upon the dead body. “Oh my god. Oh my  _ god. _ ”   


“Garcia, take the kid inside,” Rossi said, in a tone that inspired no argument. “And J.J., get the other officers out of here. This is our case, we don’t need them cluttering up the space while we figure out what’s going on.”

“This is a statement,” Spencer said, as soon as the others were gone. “He called, and he warned us. He said we got him wrong, and that we’d  _ see _ . Now we see.” His tone was dark, grim. He regretted ever going home last night, this was his fault, he could have worked it out if he’d just stuck with it…

“He’s devolving,” Morgan said. “His M.O. just changed entirely. This guy isn’t a teenage bully, and he wasn’t killed here.”

“He wasn’t killed here because it would take too long,” Rossi said. “But an obsessive killer like this-- he wouldn’t stray from his routine. His routine is part of what satisfies him, arguably just as much as the kill. Why was this worth it? What’s his game?”

“Maybe he isn’t changing his M.O.,” Spencer said slowly, seeing the other victims in his mind. “We only assumed that teenagers were his target before, but I’m telling you, what if his target isn’t them, but us? This just proves it.” He gestured to the dead body in front of them.

“You’re right,” Hotch said finally. He’d been quiet since his outburst at the cop, and Reid wasn’t expecting an agreement. “This is personal. Reid, go meet with Garcia and figure out who this guy is. Rossi, Prentiss, we need to rethink everything we’ve got.” He turned to Morgan, all at once looking very tired. “Morgan, help me get this man down.”

When Spencer met Garcia back in the computer lab, she already had the man’s info pulled up. “Ed Middleton. Fifty-four. Upper-middle class lawyer, has an ex-wife and a son, who as far as this says he has never contacted since he left when the kid was ten.”

“Where’s Bailey?” Spencer looked around, settling into a chair next to Garcia.

“Said he felt sick. I feel bad for the kid,” she made a face. “It’s worse seeing them in person. That’s why I don’t go out there. But the creep just had to shove it in my face, didn’t he?”

Spencer’s foot twinged with pain, and he shifted in his seat, focused on the information on her computer. “In high school, was Middleton…?”

Garcia shook her head. “A nobody. He blended in with the crowd, above-average grades, on the mock trial, teachers thought he was a nice kid but didn’t speak up a lot in class.”

Spencer ran his hands through his mop of hair. “What’s the correlation? Why him? What is he trying to  _ tell  _ me?”

Garcia shot him a quizzical look. “You?”

Spencer sighed. “Us. I don’t know, it’s just… hitting me personally, I don’t know why. There was something about talking to him on the phone that really freaked me out, I guess.”

“Just looking at this stuff makes me freaked out,” Garcia said. “I can’t imagine actually talking to the guy.”

But Spencer wasn’t listening anymore, he was back in his own head, replaying something she had said earlier.  _ A son, who as far as this says he has never contacted since he left.  _ And he could feel it coming again. The pain in his foot wasn’t going away; if anything it was worsening. He needed to get out of here. This was too much.

“Excuse me,” he mumbled, and nearly ran out of there, pushed himself into the men’s bathroom. He had the sense to drop to his knees and check under the stalls-- nothing-- before locking the door to the bathroom and dropping to the ground, back against the wall.

_ You’re weak.  _ His mother’s voice echoed in his head, and then was replaced by a voice that he hadn’t heard in a very long time, suspected he would never hear again.  _ I know,  _ his father said.

“I’m not weak,” he whispered to the empty bathroom, and he knew he was lying. If he were strong, he wouldn’t be sitting here. If he were strong, he would have figured this out by now.  _ If you were strong, he wouldn’t have left,  _ an insidious little voice in the back of his head whispered.  _ If you were strong, you wouldn’t be craving the dilaudid right now. _

First the bullies. He could handle that. He thought he could handle that. But now this, the dead absentee father delivered to the police’s doorstep, like one of those little potted plants that kept showing up, no matter how many he tossed in the garbage, so small and anonymous but infuriatingly personal, just like this case,  _ just  _ like this case…

His eyes snapped open and he found himself unable to breath. “ _ I know you better than you think. I know you better than you know me.”  _ The plant on his doorstep: “ _ Zinnia. To absent friends.”  _ The plant on his desk, the first one. Just before the murders started: “ _ Cosmos. They’re actually my birth month flower.”  _ They were the same person, they were the unsub, he was suddenly and absolutely sure. The unsub knew where he lived. The unsub had access to his  _ work _ . That’s why he’d thought it was Morgan, because it was on his desk-- and everyone had assumed it was just a package delivered there, but it wasn’t wrapped, it was  _ left  _ there.

A text from Garcia:  _ isolated the background audio from the call. u r gonna want to see this. _

And then Spencer was rushing to his desk, pulling his headphones on, pressing play… the conversation in the background, it wasn’t chatter. It was Spencer’s voice, responding to the call. The person calling was in the BAU headquarters when they called.

Spencer didn’t think. If he had thought, he might have called the others. He might have left a note, he might have responded to Garcia’s frightened texts demanding to know what this meant. But he didn’t respond, he didn’t call, and he didn’t think. He just grabbed his bag and ran out the door, everything a little blurry, everybody’s voices fading a little into the background.

He made it a block away. He crossed an alleyway, remembering the map in his mind, the one he’d pulled up just before he left. The one showing the boroughs of D.C., showing him that he was at least part right about the unsub. The map that showed him exactly where to go. He was so busy remembering the map that he didn’t hear the footsteps behind him from the dark alleyway, not until it was too late.

The butt of the gun came across the back of Spencer’s head, and he was out in a moment, crumpling to the ground, a hand falling out and splashing in the slush. He never had gotten around to finding his gloves.

  
“I’m so sorry,” Bailey whispered, gun in his hand. “It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I’m so sorry.”


	6. Dramatic Irony

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry it's been so long, wow! i just finished performing in a play. i came home several nights and tried to write afterward my dress rehearsals and performances, but i was so drained i hardly got anything done. i finally sat down today, turned my internet off, and finished the chapter. sorry for the wait!  
> i also want to say that when i started this fic i didn't know how long it would go or how invested in it i would be, but now that we're on the second-to-last chapter i have to say i'm really gonna miss it. we'll have one more after this, a denouement, and i promise that things will be okay. eventually.   
> violence/death tw for this chapter. you've been warned.

_Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality. - Emily Dickinson_

 

Spencer awoke to a world of suffocating darkness. His chest was tight, he couldn’t move, and for a moment he thought he was dead. It stretched out around him, the silence and the void, and he couldn’t feel a thing. His life didn’t flash before his eyes, there was no hazy replay of his friends made, love lost, accomplishments, best moments, or even his worst. The only thing he could think, alone in the darkness, was that his foot itched.

And then he remembered.

The darkness wasn’t some cavernous afterworld, it was the inside of his own head. A tight piece of cloth pressed into his eyes, forcing them shut. He could feel himself on some sort of chair, but it wasn’t what he’d expected. It was comfortable, cushioned, like his grandfather’s old TV recliner. His legs were bound together to the chair with something he suspected to be duct tape, as were his wrists about the arms of the chair. He fought to control his breathing, make it appear as if he were still asleep. He didn’t know who was here, or how many people. They hadn’t killed him yet, so staying asleep for as long as possible worked in his favor.

Bailey. It was the kid. The remembrance struck him like a slap across the face and he hissed in a breath despite himself. Spencer had figured it out moments before the audio from Garcia’s recording had confirmed his theory. He strove to remember what had happened after that. The memories were just a little fuzzy, like a sunset to a nearsighted person: bright colors, perhaps a shape or two, and the rest a blur. He knew he intended to go to Bailey’s house, confront him about it. It had been a stupid idea, he had just been so angry, burning with betrayal; he had just needed to do something.

“Spencer?” The voice was high, soft, ever unsure of itself. It came from just in front of him. “Are you awake?”

He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He didn’t know how volatile the kid was. He didn’t know anything... except that Bailey wasn’t just a kid anymore. He was dangerous, and violent. He’d murdered people, murdered teenagers. And now he had Spencer. “Bailey? Peter?” He tested the waters.

“Here, let me help.” The voice moved towards him and then there were cold fingers grazing his face, lifting the blindfold and pulling it off.

Spencer blinked, his eyes quickly adjusting to the low light. It was an apartment quite similar to his own, the walls lined with bookcases and rugs underfoot. He was on a recliner in what looked to be a living room, and Bailey stood in front of him, his forehead wrinkled in concern and a gun in its holster on his hip.

“You okay?” Bailey said, and he sounded like he meant it.

“I’m-- I’m fine.” Spencer fought for control of his voice, licked his chapped lips before he tried to speak again. “Is this your apartment?” He words were calm and careful, but he could hear his heartbeat pounding in his ears. He remembered the last time he was tied down, and then he tried to forget it.

“I didn’t know what to do,” Bailey said. “I-- this wasn’t supposed to happen. I didn’t mean to hurt you, I never meant that. I mean--” and he laughed nervously “-- this was all for you.”

Spencer blinked. “What? What was for me? The murders?”

Bailey nodded, and his eyes lit up with a fervent gleam. “Did you like it? I tried my best. I had others I was going to try, too, if you didn’t notice; there’s a dilaudid dealer in New Jersey who was top of my list. It was a work in progress, you know?”

Spencer suddenly felt nauseous, his head swimming, his vision blurring. “No. I don’t understand.”

“The bullies,” Bailey said. “Like the ones that hurt you. And then-- well, your dad. Get it? I thought you’d get it sooner, you’re so smart, but everybody else kept leading you down the wrong path. You did notice me eventually, though, didn’t you? You figured out my puzzle. I know you like puzzles, I saw your New York Times crossword a couple of weeks back. Ah, 14-down, “it might be dramatic”, remember?”

“I don’t,” Spencer said, his breathing coming too quick down. He was tied, tied down, and Bailey had a gun and he was going to kill him, just like he’d killed the others, and oh God it was because of him--

“Irony,” Bailey said, looking disappointed. “Dramatic irony. Spencer, are you okay?” He reached a hand out and placed it on Spencer’s arm.

Spencer jerked away with a gasp. “Don’t touch me! Get off!” His foot was aching again, and not the ghost of an old wound, the sharp sting of fresh pain, of leather on skin.

“I’m trying to help you,” Bailey said.

“You’re a murderer!” Spencer and Bailey locked eyes, one pair wide and frightened like a wounded animal, and the other furious. And Spencer’s were the angry ones. “You didn’t do this for me, you did it for yourself, because you’re a psychotic obsessive stalker. You don’t know me, you don’t know anything about me except for what fits into your delusion. I’m not your friend, I’m not your brother, and I’m not your lover, I’m your victim, aren’t I?”

Bailey struck him across the face, fist connecting with forehead and snapping Spencer’s head back. Spencer could feel blood slowly trickle down from his eyebrow towards his eye. He turned back to Bailey, who stood frozen.

“That’s what I thought,” Spencer said softly. He knew he shouldn’t be aggravating Bailey. He knew he needed to find a way out, find his phone, find a weapon, do something. But all he could see were the faces of the teenagers, of the blood slowly accumulating on the ground beneath the body of Ed Middleton. And Bailey dared to say it was his fault? “I didn’t do this. You did this.”

“I know I did,” Bailey said. “Damn right, I did it.” He rocked on his heel, his hand wavering dangerously near the gun. “And you noticed, didn’t you? You were impressed. You didn’t see me before. You didn’t see me when I gave you compliments. Or when I gave you flowers. No, what made you see me was bodies.”

“You’re not the victim here,” Spencer said. “You’re not the hero. You know that, right? Heroes don’t kill people.”

“Tell that to Tobias Hankel!” Bailey shot back, his hand finally closing on the gun and drawing it.

Spencer barely even saw the weapon, barely saw the room. He was back in the graveyard, hair caked with his own blood, hands sore from their grip on the shovel but holding something else now. A loud bang, a flash of light, and Tobias was dead. Tobias who had saved his life. Tobias who was hurt and afraid and alone and ill.

He squeezed his eyes shut tight and shook his head. “I didn’t want to. I didn’t mean to hurt him.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Bailey echoed. “I just wanted you to see me, even a fraction of the way I see you.”

When Spencer opened his eyes again they were heavy, and he was back in the room. Bailey’s gun was still pointed at him, and he knew what he had to do. “You shouldn’t have kept me in your apartment. They’re going to find you, soon, and they’re going to put you away for life. And you’re not gonna be famous, you’re not gonna be special, you’re just gonna be another one of their cases.”

“You’ll remember me,” Bailey said, the barrel of the gun shaking but aimed at Spencer’s chest. “You’ll always remember me.”

“Put the gun down, Bailey,” Spencer said, even though he knew how this was going to end, how these things always ended. “We don’t have to do it this way.”

“I only ever wanted to you like me,” Bailey said, tears spilling out and down his cheeks.

And then, softly, Spencer said, “I do.” He took a deep breath. “I think what you did was incredible. Bailey-- Peter-- the others aren’t gonna understand, but I do. You wanted to protect me, right? You just wanted to help. Because we’re really similar, aren’t we? You’re smart, you’re quiet, you got bullied as a kid because of that. I understand. More than you think. I know what you’re going through because I’m just like you. All you wanted was to not be alone, right? To have someone see you?”

“Yes,” Bailey whispered.

“I see you,” Spencer said. He forced the next words out of his mouth. They tasted bitter. “But I will never forgive you.”

“I’m sorry,” Bailey whispered, and then he shot himself in the head.

He crumpled to the ground like a dropped rag doll, limp and pale, eyes unseeing and cold fingers still twitching in a mimic of life.

Spencer took a deep breath, tried to fight back the tears, but he was just too goddamn tired. “I’m so sorry,” he repeated. “I’m so sorry, please forgive me. I’m sorry.”

He was still repeating it when his team burst in the apartment, when they found him in the living room, when they untied him and Morgan placed a hand on his shoulder, asked him if he was hurt.

“It’s my fault,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry.


	7. Air Mask

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guys. GUYS! it's over. since i last wrote you, i have turned 16, been on vacation, and written almost 20,000 words for another CM fic that i'm going to start publishing soon, That One Summer. i've really been missing working on this, though! it took a while for the right words to come, because i knew i needed to end this in a way that felt both fulfilling and genuine, but i finally got it, and i really hope you like how it turned out. thank you for reading <3

_“In case of emergency, air masks will drop from the ceiling. If you are traveling with a minor, please put on your own mask before helping the minor.” - Air flight emergency procedure warning_

 

“Hey, kid. Reid. ... _Spencer!_ ” Morgan’s voice finally pierced through and Spencer’s eyes shot open, head jerked up. He was sitting at his desk, arms folded on a stack of books.

“Sorry,” he said, heart pounding in his ears. “I must have just dozed off.”

“No kidding,” Morgan said, leaning against the side of his desk. “You were twitching, saying something in your sleep.” The concern in his eyes betrayed him, and Spencer felt a sickening twist in his stomach.

“What did I say?”

“Nothing,” Morgan lied. “Just something about…” He sighed, ran a hand across the stubble on his head. He grabbed a rolling chair and sat down next to Spencer, and the younger boy knew he was in trouble. “Do you dream about Hankel, Reid?”

“No, I’m fine,” he said instinctively, but something about Morgan’s attitude made him catch himself. “That’s not true. I do have dreams about him. Well, more like nightmares. Sometimes.”

“How often? ...How often, Reid?”

Spencer swallowed. “Not every night,” he said in an attempt to reassure Morgan, but it had the opposite effect.

“Jesus, kid, why didn’t you tell anyone?” His eyes shone with something tender. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t…” Spencer ran his fingers through his hair, pulling at the tangles. “I don’t know. I didn’t want to put that on you. It’s not your problem, any of you. And I guess part of me figured that I deserved to deal with it alone.” There was a lump in his throat it was becoming harder and harder to push down.

“ _Why?_ ”

“Because I always have,” Spencer said, fighting to keep his voice under control, fighting not to break. Not in front of Morgan. “When Dad left, when the kids at school were bothering me, when I was stressed out, everything, I couldn’t put that on Mom. She had enough to worry about. And then when I sent her away…” He tugged harder at his hair, pricks of pain blossoming on his scalp. “She hated me. And then I really couldn’t talk to her. I just had to deal with it, so I did. I read books. I didn’t think about it. And then with Hankel-- Tobias-- the dilaudid helped, at first.” He’d never said it out loud to them, to anyone, had never actually confirmed it. _I was a junkie._ “It helped me forget. There was so much I just needed to forget. I knew that wasn’t right, though, and it really just made everything worse. But it wasn’t better after I stopped, either. I still couldn’t sleep. Can’t. There’s so much to dream about, Derek, so many things.”

Morgan reached out and put his hand over Spencer’s, stopped him tearing at his own hair. He hadn’t realized how hard he’d been pulling until Morgan stopped him. “Kid. Spencer. I know this job is hard, it gets to me too. And with everything you’ve been through, I can’t imagine.” He paused, his hand still on Spencer’s. “I mean, I can. I didn’t have anyone to talk to either, as a kid. The one person who tried talking to me after my dad died was… not good for me. He wasn’t a good man. I dreamed about him every night for years.”

“But you seem so…” Spencer struggled to find the word. “Okay.”

“I am,” Derek said. “I went to therapy, Reid, and I got a job doing something I love, and I got away from him. And I found you guys in the process. It still haunts me, of course it does, it’s not the kind of thing you ever forget, but it doesn’t hurt me the same way anymore. They’re just memories, Spencer. He’s gone. Hankel is gone. Bailey, too.

“I know,” Spencer said. “I killed them. 

“Hankel was self-defense, and Bailey killed himself. That wasn’t you.”

“I knew exactly what I was doing,” Spencer said. “I knew what to say to make him do it, and I did. I might as well have pulled the trigger myself. He loved me, in some terrible way, but he was sick, and I could have saved him, that’s my job, but instead I killed him.”

“You don’t know that.” Morgan shook his head. “You can’t save everybody, Spencer.” At Spencer’s face, and he leaned in and spoke insistently, squeezed his hand. “You _can’t_. Spend too much time thinking that way and you’ll drive yourself crazy. You can try to help people, but in the end they’re the only ones who can save themselves. You have to spend time trying to save yourself, kid, or you won’t be able to help anybody at all.”

 

***

“It’s seriously no fun playing with you,” Emily complained from the table next to him. She and Rossi and JJ were bent over their trivia sheet, tallying scores before the next round started. 

Spencer flashed her a smile. “I don’t know everything,” he said. “Only most things.”

“We’re ahead by eleven points,” Garcia said, finishing tabulating their own score. She sat at the bar in-between Spencer and Morgan. Her phone interrupted the chatter of the bar, a Spice Girls song blaring out. She blushed and hopped off the barstool. “BRB, that’s Kevin.”

“See? We’re even at a disadvantage now,” Spencer said.

“You count for at least four normal people, Spence,” JJ laughed. “I can’t believe you got that Star Wars one about the character named after that Lucas’s son.”

“Of course,” Spencer grinned. “Who could forget Dexter Jettster, diner owner and gun-smuggler extraordinaire?" 

“Literally everybody,” Derek said. “I’m on your team and I swore you were making that shit up.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Spencer said. “I feel like you must know by now I’m not just making this stuff up. Nobody knows Star Wars better than me.”

“Nobody knows anything better than you, that’s the point,” Rossi shot back. “Maybe if we get him drunker. Bartender, another round for my good friend in the sweater vest!” 

The host called out into the microphone that the next round was starting, and a red-haired girl passed out notecards with the lists of questions. “You have five minutes,” the host said. “Starting… now!” 

“What school houses America’s oldest and largest library,” Morgan read aloud. “Consisting of over 12 million--” 

“Harvard,” Spencer cut him off. “Next.” 

“What was the name under which boxing star Joseph L. Barrow rose to fame?” Morgan read, then paused for thought. “That’s Joe Louis, isn’t it?”

Spencer shrugged. “This one’s yours.” 

“I’m putting that down,” Morgan decided, and wrote it in. “Okay, alright, uh, what Bruce Springsteen song was played by the space shuttle Discovery when they met with the Hubble Space Telescope in 1999?”

  
Morgan’s eyes flickered up from the page to meet Spencer’s. “ _Rendezvous,_ ” they said in unison, and their laughter filled the room.

**Author's Note:**

> feel free to drop some kudos/a comment if you liked this! <3 <3 thank you for reading


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